While certainly not an epiphany like the original, Nighy makes Living worthwhile through sheer force of will. In the film’s picturesque, composed, nearly stagnant beauty, he finds something honest in repression.

Even with a bit of a dip in “Kidprint,” V/H/S/Halloween registers as one of the series’ strongest recent efforts, buoyed by the joyfully demented humor and explosive bloodletting of “Diet Phantasma,” “Fun Size” and “Home Haunt” in particular.

Sure, the action is thrilling and the visual effects are stellar, but Heroes Rising as a whole only manages to graze the surface of what makes My Hero Academia the series itself so great.

Slattery and Bernbaum’s adherence to genre standards may hold Maggie Moore(s) back from doing anything new in its space, but not from doing anything worthwhile. There’s nothing wrong with a messy low-level crime movie done right.

A jolly romp filled with songs, jokes and clever twists on a well-known genre, it is plenty of fun—but only if you can forgive how frequently it repeats the same old joke, and, as a result, becomes guilty of overplaying its own gimmick.

Throughout all the chatter, some naturalistically repetitive and some more philosophical, is a sense of characters searching, whether that’s communicated through acting advice, relationships to vices (“How can it be bad for you? It’s just food”) or musings on the shortness of life.

The China Hustle handily clarifies opaque topics and moves like a bullet, but the bullet catches us right in the gut. By the time the film ends you’ll wish you could go back to being ignorant again.

In Water has more of a sad-sack quality than the semi-spirited chattiness of In Our Day, yet its images of young people wandering around in search of inspiration, artistic or otherwise, also have a shivery, ghostly edge that makes the melancholy feel earned.

Drop is ultimately a nice movie about an abuse survivor being terrorized by seemingly omniscient forces, loaded with moments that don’t really hold up to scrutiny and well-sold by Fahy’s performance.

Mostly, Five Nights at Freddy’s relies on a lot of jump scares, and scenes with building tension that result in cat-and-mouse scenarios, which are perfect for the age range it’s playing to.

It’s not a stretch to expect that a film about the infamous Munich Conference to be a ripe bundle of nerves and apprehension. But the film ends up being as suspenseful as a 1990s rom-com.

Ultimately, what Penguins lacks in vibranium frisbees or live-action blue genies, it more than makes up for in … well … penguins.

Deadpool 2 is at its best when it cheerfully doesn’t give a shit. The more it cared, the less I did.

There isn’t an action movie out there in 2017 that’s quite like it (for better or for worse), no action movie either as crazy or as committed to its craziness.

It’s best when it fully commits to its subtlety. Long passages without dialogue highlight the wavering music and Todd Chandler’s artful, sometimes wry editing.

Warm Bodies shambles along as inoffensively as its “regular” zombies—with little fright, little gore and an occasional chuckle. But, as a mild diversion that won’t bother either person on a date, one could do far worse.

Deliver Us From Evil’s sweaty thrills might be derivative, but they’re far from dead on arrival.

Diallo undoubtedly strikes at potent topics with skill and sets her collaborators up for success...but its storylines and characters don’t convincingly coalesce.

It may not be a must-see movie for everyone, but a select few—scrappy DIY filmmakers, lovers of hands-off fantasy, those that love a good “film still as portrait”—will find something to enjoy. The rest might chafe a bit, but will still hang on to see where The Wanting Mare’s ride takes them.

Although the shooting style enhances the realism, the characters often struggle to reach the point of complete personhood. This shortcoming goes beyond direction, and can occasionally be felt on a narrative level.

What sometimes resembles a goof on Stephen King becomes a form of tribute to the author’s ability to mine terror from the mere facts of living.

A worthwhile effort that’s premise and delivery demonstrate the difficulty of bridging the gap between spectator and celebrity.

This is a striking introduction to Donaldson’s unflinching eye.

River of Grass is perhaps best described as lightly informative in its tribute to Florida’s vast Everglades and the influence of pioneering ecologist Marjory Stoneman Douglas, more influenced instead by a desire to stir the viewer emotionally and soulfully, to invite them into the bewitching, intoxicatingly thick air of a place where life teems in every direction you could think to look.

God’s Creatures doesn’t have quite the same enchanting, unnerving mystery of The Fits, where a girls’ dance troupe begins to suffer unexplained seizures. The hardscrabble working-class details here inevitably feel a bit more familiar, whether from American kitchen-sink indies or Irish plays.

So, yeah, The Old Guard may be comfort food, but during this particular year, and thanks in large part to this particular cast and crew—it will hit the spot for many.

Consider The Forever Purge as the “well, well, well, if it isn’t the consequences of my own actions” meme as a horror film.

The film never quite achieves the level of fevered hurry for which it aims—sometimes due to its often trite, on-the-nose dialogue and sometimes to the stilted delivery of said dialogue.